"I was born in Brandenburg an den Havel in the eastern part of Germany. My father was a solicitor, but in the war years I saw very little of him. Of all my family, I was closest to my grandmother — when I was very small, she used to take me for walks in the woods near our house and tell me about nature beings. We'd often walk silently, too. I was convinced that sunrise and sunset were arranged by the nature beings. It was their special time in the day.
"When I was five, the Russians came. We were taken and locked in the cellar of a neighbour's house. All the women were repeatedly violated. After that my mother had times when she was almost out of her mind, and we were looked after by a young village girl. My brother was only seven weeks old then — he would have died if the girl hadn't cared for him. After we were let out, we often had to stay overnight in our own cellar while bombs and shells were falling all around. I remember wounded horses dying in our garden, screaming and waving their legs, everything lit by flames. All the old men and young boys, however sick, were taken off to work by the Russians. They were driven with whips with the soldiers shouting, 'Davai! Davai!' Then the refugees started coming in endless streams from East Prussia, dirty, injured, hungry, carrying what they had on their backs.
"Once Grandfather was taken away. We didn't know if he was alive or not. He didn't come back for weeks. Then one night, the house door opened. Everyone was afraid it was the soldiers again, but it was him, broken, white and old. He went to his chair without a word, took out a big handkerchief and put it over his face — it was so we shouldn't see him crying.
'There was very little food. People tried to steal things from the troop supply trains, but if the Russians saw them, they were shot. When I was six, my mother took us to Thuringen to her sister's, where there was more food. It meant leaving my grandmother. The journey took two days. We had to walk a lot of the way. We lived three years there, without ever being welcome. One day my father came back, but he didn't remember me and I didn't remember him. I was so disappointed. My mother was still terribly affected by her experiences and could not be close to him. It was also a very hard time for me. After five months my father moved to Hamburg and we finally went to West Germany to be with him in 1949.
"My joy in life was to visit my grandmother for holidays. Every time I came back to my family from these holidays I would get ill. I began to develop a hatred of the Russians and of communism, projecting the pain of my unhappy childhood onto them.
"One day my parents brought us children together and told us they were going to divorce. It was a shock, because there hadn't been any rows. My father used to say, 'Only the mob shouts.' I, too, learned to hold on to my feelings, lock them inside. My father remarried a much younger woman. Although I didn't get on with my mother, I felt for her, and began to hate and distrust men.
"After I left school, I trained as an industrial manager. It was then that I met my husband. I was so suspicious that it took four years before I'd say I'd marry him. That time and the first years of marriage were the happiest of my life. My need for love, and his need to escape from being overprotected seemed to fit nicely together, but gradually I began to lose my own sense of identity and live through him. A few years after our daughter was born we began to separate emotionally, and eventually were no longer able to talk to each other. I went to a therapist, who was a minister, and that brought me back to Christianity. Being in a church congregation gave me a lot of support. My husband simply wouldn't talk, and after three years I got a divorce and trained as a teacher. It was a hard time. I kept going and tried to live my feelings through my daughter. But she reacted to my withheld emotions and I was afraid of hers, so our relationship was often fraught.
"In 1983 I went to a workshop in Hamburg given by an American Indian. He challenged my victim consciousness, and my belief that the events of my life were due to chance. I tried to understand my childhood and forgive my parents. It also broadened my Christian beliefs. It was in these workshops that I first met people who'd been to the Findhorn Community. I was given The Magic of Findhorn and reading it reawakened my childhood belief in nature beings. I had the chance of going either to the Findhorn Community or to Finland for a holiday. I had a dream in which I was buying a ticket for the north of Scotland. That decided the issue!
"During my Experience week, I was overwhelmed by the love people showed here. Then I did Eileen's learning to Love' workshop. I determined to put love in centre place in my life. Back in Hamburg, my relations with my pupils improved, and I opened up to love human beings. But I knew I had a long way to go. I took a year off, to come to the Foundation — at least, I thought it'd only be a year. When I came I had a bad knee for three months. I had one leg in the old, one in the new! I pushed myself further — I went to Sai Baba and to the Himalayas. Baba brought up all my shadow side for me — at the ashram I had to face my envy and my dependence on people. But after I left and managed to free myself of resistance to the different culture, I had a wonderful time trekking in Nepal, just me and a guide.
"My life in Hamburg didn't seem so important any more. I did more workshops and began to release my old life. It took me a year to let go. Then I came and joined the Foundation in July 1988. I knew I had to open up to my feelings, and I did a three-month Bioenergetic and Gestalt workshop. It was hard work, but it prepared me for the major reconciliation I still needed.
"I brought very few things from Hamburg. I wanted to release my old life.. But for some reason I took a little Russian doll. For the first time some Russians came to our conference here at the Foundation and I met them. All my old pain, hate, fear and guilt came up again. Slowly I began to work with it. I read Perestroika by Gorbachov, and then came the chance to go to the Soviet Union with a Findhorn Community group.
"When we arrived on the plane in Leningrad, for some reason we weren't allowed off straight away. Soldiers with machine guns patrolled outside. It brought all my childhood terrors to the surface. When we went inside the airport, all the police looked like soldiers. If I could, I'd have flown straight back. I kept talking to myself, saying, 'Stay in the present....'
"In Moscow I met two Soviet Sai Baba devotees who had released all their war experiences. It was time for me to do the same. But I also met Russians who didn't want to talk to Germans because of the war. One of our guides spoke incessantly about the German destruction of the Soviet Union. I began to feel totally guilty, even in our group. I shared what I was feeling, and others shared too, giving me a new way of seeing things. Because I'd bottled everything up and never shared about it, I'd been blocked from really hearing anyone else's opinions either. It was such a relief to let go. Then I thought of a journey I'd made to Israel. I had felt compassion and sadness, but not personal guilt. I realised that my guilt feelings were connected to my hate and fear of the Russians. I was responding to my own suppressed emotions.
"I opened to the warmth of the Russians I met. At the end of two weeks, I could look into the faces of the young soldiers and actually see the friendliness there. I returned filled with a sense of inner peace. And something else happened. My right shoulder had been stiff with a kind of arthritis for years. Nothing would cure it. After the Russian trip it became flexible and free.
"I still have a tendency to lock myself up when I get hurt. Staying open and sharing is a daily exercise for me. I've begun to give massages, which bring up feelings in those I work with; I can support them by using the experience I've gained in learning to open myself. In the future, I'd like to join the guest department and work with groups. I'm sure I won't go back to school. I want to stay in the Findhorn Community.
"I was born in Dundee but we lived in Carnoustie for the first eight years of my life, near the beach. My mum ran a post office, and my dad worked for the health service in Dundee. They were happy times.
"My dad became the administrator of a convent for the disabled in England, so we moved and lived in a large house in the grounds. I was happy there, too. For the first time I had a room of my own. The convent grounds were beautiful. They had an animal corner for children, and my brother and I looked after the animals — a donkey chickens, rabbits and guinea pigs. There was a tiny village school with all-age classes which took some getting used to, though.
"When we were living in England I first visited the Findhorn Foundation. I did the Children's week while my parents did the Experience week. I fell in love with the community. The children seemed so free and happy — I was jealous. We only stayed in England for a year, then when we were on holiday my dad said, 'Would you like to move to the Findhorn Community?' I was very excited, but the others weren't so sure. We decided to come up and see if there was somewhere to live. After the interviews — even we children had them — a caravan for the family was available, so we went home and started packing up our belongings.
"I was very excited about living in a caravan. We moved up in the summer holidays, and I spent three weeks making friends. I fell straight into the children's life in the community. It's an incredible place to grow up. I pulled away from my family because I spent so much time outside with the others. It's impossible to have a tight-knit family here — there's so much to do. There are no main roads, and lots of people to care for you. We could help in the kitchen, or cleaning-even working was made fun. I also liked going to the primary school in Kinloss.
"Around the time I started at Forres Academy things changed. Several of our young people were there and there was a lot of judgement against the Foundation, which we hadn't found at primary school. It was horrible for Foundation kids — we got teased every day. I began to question why I was living in the community. I tried to make friends at school and for the first two or three years attempted to conceal where I lived. I tried to do what the others did. At school everyone was like a closed box. Then I'd come back to the Foundation where everyone was open and happy. For people of my age it was very hard, so we rebelled and some petty thieving started in the Foundation.
"I'm very adaptable, but for some of the others it was more difficult. We were all involved in what happened. For us, it released aggression and confusion, but it made things in the community difficult and people didn't trust the teenagers. There came a stage where all the other young people left and I was on my own, so I started making friends with older people, lots of them put me 'under their wing'. There were also older young people around, and some of them invited me to spend time with them. When some of the others returned to the community, I was more balanced and didn't feel like a young person any more. I stopped trying to fit in at Forres Academy, wore the clothes I wanted to wear and said what I wanted to say. I concentrated on working so I could leave school with qualifications as early as possible.
"Because of the difficulties with the teenagers Craig started meeting with us. Their experiences had made most of them more mature as well, but we still weren't trusted. We were watched everywhere, especially at Cluny. That created more aggro — a 'Catch 22' situation. Craig wanted to make friends with us, but he also wanted to find out what was going on. Then Allan Howard started coming to the meetings. He could see it was getting nowhere; he saw we had to organise things ourselves.
"We had our first Youth Project meeting over at Cluny. It made an incredible change in our lives. From then on trust between us and the community started growing. We began with a youth exchange with young people from the Easterhouse housing estate in Glasgow. We stayed there for five days and then they came up to stay with us. Together we organised 'Terra Nova'.
'Terra Nova was a conference for activists. We invited people from housing groups, social-work-type groups, youth groups, people in working class areas. We had black poets and a Rasta group. The idea was that everyone would get together and we'd create a network. Each group shared what they'd done and how, so by hearing each other they could find solutions for their own problems. It all took place in a huge marquee in the lower Caravan Park, and most of the delegates stayed in caravans. It rained all the time and the marquee nearly blew down, but it was very successful. About 200 people came, but they represented nearly five million others; it was mentioned in Parliament. At the end of the conference we set up a computer network. A lot of community members helped during the conference, and we used the Hall for lectures, but it wasn't officially organised by the Foundation.
"It was an incredible confidence boost to pull it off. We went on to do smaller things — work projects in the community like cleaning leaves from gutters, picking up litter, painting; just helpful things.
"For our next big project, we started working on an exchange with Native Indians from Canada. We spent a year arranging for them to come over here and in 1986 they came. We spent the first week on Erraid, then they did a sort of Experience week at the Foundation; a very flexible one. We all spent the last week in a hired coach touring Britain. They were singing and drumming everywhere — they appeared on the 'Blue Peter' programme on TV — and they allowed us to sing and dance with them.
"When they left, we spent another year fund-raising to go over there. We spent three incredible weeks in Winnipeg and followed the Pow-Wow trail across the Rockies, camping. We did sweat lodges, met a medicine man — the whole point was to share cultures. It was hard to come home again.
"I'd just left school. It was too late to go to college and I didn't really want to. I was living at Cluny. I decided to stay on another year, working half time in the Education Branch and half for the Youth Project. Then I met Andy and we got together, which created total explosions in my family. I got really close with my mum in this year — she became one of my best friends. I did an audition for drama school but got turned down, so I still stayed on in the Foundation, co-focalising summer youth programmes which were developing more and more. When Kim, the other focaliser left, I trained Jessica to focalise them.
"Then came the Botswana project. The idea of it was to take young people from three different cultures and put them in a situation alien to all of them. We came from the Soviet Union, Western Europe — actually Britain and Sweden — and Botswana. The point was to learn to cooperate whilst discovering our cultural differences. Thirty-eight of us, including facilitators, were in the travelling party — 14 Europeans, 8 Botswanans, and 12 from the Soviet Union. We travelled through Botswana, observing the ecological situation and then, as part of the debriefing, we gave presentations to the Kalahari Desert Conservation Society and to the Botswana Wild Life Department.
"We really discovered the cultural differences! Apart from the scenic beauty which we all loved, group interchange was incredible. We had group meetings and smaller 'family' meetings every two days. Each family had a couple from each culture, and families took turns to cook for the whole group and clean up. We squabbled over who was working and who wasn't, just the pettiest things, but as we got into arguments we found that there was much more behind them. In 1990 the second part of the trip will take place, starting in the Ural mountains in Russia and doing work projects, then going by train to Sweden for a week of travelling around, and finally coming to Britain to visit the Centre for Alternative Technology in Wales and to spend the last week at the Findhorn Foundation — five weeks in all.
"As for me, I'm going to drama school in London. For the next three years that's where I'll be. It's a big move, but it really is time to go. Everything's worked perfectly, so I know it must be right. I've got a grant and a room in a flat with two other girls. It's the perfect thing to do, even if I don't end up being an actress. I've learned here that I can take the space to follow up my interests."
I asked Shirley about her approach to spirituality.
"When I first came here I didn't know what it meant. Being brought up with it all around me, though, all the good things came into me without my realising it. I learned to attune and meditate in meetings. It wasn't drummed into me, but it was just there. I don't sit and meditate, but some of the things I do are meditation in action. Sometimes I wonder where all the things I know come from, because I've never been taught them. I guess I'm probably very aware for my age. It's inbred.
"The only problem with being brought up in the Findhorn Community is that you grow up too quickly. Maybe it's because you're taken as an equal from the start. I feel I missed some of my youth. Being a young person is important — I think I'm too old for my own good. For me, personally, I wouldn't want to see the situation different now, though. It's pretty perfect. My worry is for the kids who go to the Steiner school, because they're missing out on the reality of the world. The Foundation is a pretty protective place. Even though I struggled through my education, I'd rather have been at those state schools than at a Steiner school. Maybe when these kids finally go out into the world, they're going to get a big shock. Still, I think the Foundation's a perfect place for kids to grow up. I wouldn't have wanted to be anywhere else!'
"I was born in Enfield, near London. My parents managed various shops — newsagents, tobacconists, that sort of thing.
"I've always been fascinated to discover how things work. When I was only four, I tried to find out how light bulbs work; it began my interest in electronics. I had fears of going to school and was a bit of a loner, loving nature and animals. At the age of eight I joined the RSPCA. My father and my brother, on the other hand, loved soldiers and my father shot pigeons. My other love was science fiction. I joined the British Interplanetary Society at the age of 12. I was the youngest member attending their lectures at Caxton Hall.
"School became less threatening as I got older. I was bullied at first, but at some point I learned the power of silence, to use my eyes so that I didn't need physical force to protect myself. I did well at science, but was put off religion.
"My parents divorced when I was 13.I felt a separation between us; they were more human beings than parents. After the divorce I became cynical about life for a period of about a year, challenging everything in myself and others. I didn't want girlfriends. I was depressed by the hypocrisy I saw and enjoyed the freedom of being left alone.
"I left school at 16 to study electronics with the Post Office, but I found it boring and soon switched to the Merchant Navy where I eventually qualified as a Radio Officer. I felt alienated from the interests of my fellow officers — mainly pubs and brothels — so I started to study radar and then taught it for nine years in Decca Radar.
"In spite of questioning the value of marriage, I married and, three years into it, found myself with a good house, a car and two kids. My wife wanted a bigger house and more money, but I felt there had to be something else. I found a book in the library by Yogi Ramacharaka — Fourteen Lessons in Oriental Philosophy and Occultism. It was a turning point. I read it in the kitchen while my wife watched the TV It was the first of a collection of more than a thousand books on occult and spiritual subjects. I devoured them.
"After two years as an armchair occultist, I decided to apply it and chose the Theravada Buddhist path. Christianity had no am peal — it seemed too simple and I was governed by my intellect. My friends called me 'Spock', which I took as a compliment. My wife, realising that she wasn't with the person she'd married, fell in love with the man next door, decamped with the kids and moved in with him. For two years she lived next door, testing my philosophy of life. But a year after she left, I met Barbara Gillians. We found we could grow spiritually together in a free atmosphere. We were still together when we came to the Findhorn Foundation.
"I fell in love with the idea of being a teacher, picturing the children hanging on my every word, and began a teachers' training course. After two months the retina in my right eye became detached and I had to have an emergency operation. Three months back in my course it happened again. When I returned for yet another attempt at the course, the retina detached for the third time. As I lay in bed after the third operation I realised I wasn't seeing something. Of course — I'd never be happy with the system of discipline and restriction on freedom in schools. It was sledgehammer guidance! I phoned the teachers' training college from the hospital and resigned. Two days later I was offered a job at the college where I had studied before, teaching electronics.
"So I had a further seven years' teaching in good conditions with a short week and long holidays. I began to visit new age communities and studied and taught astrology. One day I was driving with a friend when she spontaneously began to channel a message that it was time for me to simplify and purify my life, give up teaching and find trust to let life unfold for me. I began crying for the first time in many years, and couldn't drive any more. For three weeks I stayed in an altered state of consciousness, writing poetry, loving nature, my students.... Then I resigned from my job. But, still wanting to secure my future, I began planning to start a jewelry business. Just before I was ready to launch it, in the middle of a 'Star Wars' film, I heard, clearly, three words only: 'Don't Sell Jewelry!' I gave up and existed for four hard years as a supply teacher in difficult schools in South London. I learned to pray in the toilets before class, and once more used the power of silent looking to keep order. The kids nicknamed me 'the Vicar', which was appropriate because Jesus was becoming my model as a healer and teacher.
"Eventually I came to the Findhorn Foundation. While I was scrubbing potatoes in the kitchen during my Experience week, it came to me to stay on a further week. In the second week I decided to do Essence. My mother had died and left me just the right amount to pay for the programme. Essence was an opening and joyous experience, but I resisted membership. Finally Barbara wanted to visit and I returned because of her, hoping to be a healer at Minton House. After two weeks we both had an urge to become members. Our house had been on the market for a year, but after the decision it sold within two days. We had the money!
"We joined in 1984. I worked in Cluny Maintenance for more than a year, and focalised it for half that time. Although I didn't have the skills to maintain Cluny, with prayer and manifestation it was a graced and happy period.
"I had done a little healing for many years, but at the Foundation I developed it, helping people to reach a relaxed state where they could contact their higher selves for information on the psychological roots of their problems. Through forgiveness they could then move towards healing. I co-focalised a six-week healing workshop with Karin Werner, which challenged me to let go of my science-teacher background and become open and trusting. I started to work in the Health and Wholeness department giving healings to members and guests, and took the opportunity to co-focalise our Healing Conference.
"I have stayed in Cluny all the time, but Barbara and I split up and she went to live in the Park. It was sad, but we both knew it was for the best. The relationship had lasted 16 years.
"After the conference I joined Personnel. It was a real growth period. I hated upsetting people. Now I had to put my truth across in a loving way and sometimes face their disappointment. It gave me confidence in my own inner attunement. Now I'm working as an educational staff member, giving not only my 'Healing the Cause' workshops — I've done eight now — but also working with A Course In Miracles, which has had an electrical effect on me. I sense that the development of my work will take me out into the world as well as here in the Foundation.
"Last year I joined the new spiritual Core Group. I didn't intend to. I only had eight votes and felt no strong draw to it, so I sat relaxed, watching the selection process in the Universal Hall. Someone said I should be on the group, so I went down to the centre of the Hall to say why I wasn't going to be. To my surprise, when I got there an energy arrived to bring me onto the group and I followed it. I stayed with an arduous selection procedure, and finally was accepted. In the group of eight, I'm the only one from Cluny. Most of the others have been in the community longer and know each other. It took me time to feel empowered in the group. Now I find our one-hour meditations powerful and nourishing; what I give to them I get back — giving and receiving are the same. The Core Group is like the spiritual root of the Findhorn Community's tree. Our job is to maintain the spiritual purpose in the direction of the community, to be a secure reference point. As a member of Core Group I've taken the focus for community meetings, helping us to revive inspiration, move in new directions and anchor spirit.
"My external success in healing, workshops and friendships is not enough to satisfy me. The fruits are in the inward journey. That's what is important: learning to trust in God, to simplify life. My major task is to keep my heart open, to say 'yes' to life. Joy comes through service. I can fall into the illusion of sacrifice by thinking there's too much to do, too much is asked of me. But nothing is asked of me — I choose. I feel I'm going back home, to a spiritual home I once left, where I can find peace of mind. I have a strong sense that things are speeding up on the planet; the earth needs a great deal of education and healing. I believe I incarnated to help with that."
Angela Morton lives, like Michael, at Cluny. She is 33.
"I was born on March 4th, 1956. March forth! How I live my life is connected to that birth date.
"I grew up in Hamburg. I can't remember very much, except that I loved flowers. I could lose myself in them and stroke them for hours. My parents had a vegetable shop, but my father died when I was five and that started the era of growing up. There were three of us: my elder sister, my mother and I. It formed my view of independent women. Without being negative about it, men aren't needed. It just seems natural that a woman is fully equal. My sister and I are very close. She's the one person in my life with whom I experienced a totally unconditional love that allowed me to develop my spiritual being, because I could be anything with her and she still loved me.
"I liked school at first — I was among the best in my class — but gradually I lost interest and accepted mediocrity. I loved reading, especially adult books. Looking back, I don't think I understood half of them. I used to like going on holiday in adolescent camps. The groups gave me a sense of independence from my family.
"My mother thought my sister and I were more capable than she was. She expected us to take responsibility at an early age. By the time I was 161 found the family rules irritating. I just wanted to leave. Talking with my mother didn't solve it. I made a suicide attempt, a cry for help and attention. I stayed two weeks in a psychiatric hospital, not wanting to go back home. But I had to, and I lived for another tense year in the family, ill with psoriasis. The illness was so bad, I had to go to hospital, and a doctor there saw the psychological link and encouraged me to leave home. She made me phone my mother from the hospital to tell her I was leaving, and waited with a glass of brandy to fortify me after the phone call.
"Although I was still at school, I supported myself by working in the afternoons in the kindergarten and with slow learners. It taught me that giving love helps in education. But the life I saw around me seemed full of ignorance, unconsciousness and selfishness. I didn't see any ideal to live by. I disliked commercialism, so I became involved in left-wing politics, but I found the same untruths there too, so I left.
"I shared a house with two young men. We loved each other a lot and wanted to understand what life and the universe mean. We talked about it a great deal. Once I had an experience in which I recognised the omnipresence of God — he was so small that he was in everything, so he was the biggest thing of all. It reminds me of our recent community meeting on God — I received the message, 'God is everywhere, God is even in nothing.' At that time I
called God 'It'. Growing up in the sixties, I couldn't easily recognise God.
"I thought I should train for a profession. University didn't interest me, so I learned book selling. It was enjoyable to help people choose literature. It brought up the question 'Who am I?' It was as if I was a different person for each customer, so I reasoned, 'If I live in a community with all sorts of different people, I'll have to be myself.' I started little communities, but they all fell apart over silly things like dishwashing.
"I began a relationship with one of the two young men I was living with. He'd heard about the Findhorn Community and gave me a book about it. I was very judgmental of spirituality centred on gurus and although I wasn't attracted by the idea of talking with nature devas, the idea of long-term community life did seem attractive.
"Our own attempt at building a community collapsed, but we had saved a little money and decided to use it to travel, starting at the Findhorn Foundation. We did our Experience week in 1981 and, basically, I've never left since.
"At the beginning, I was scared. All the members seemed like goddesses and gods. They folded the sheets so slowly and carefully in Homecare, and I thought, That's love.' Then I cut carrots at the same speed in the kitchen and people didn't like me. In my second week I did my first KP with Karin Werner, another German, working with the dishwashing machine, and she worked at my normal speed. It sounds silly but it felt wonderful.
"After a month my partner and I both wanted membership. The Findhorn Community's gift was to bring love for God — rather than just having the 'It'. God came down from my head into my heart, the greatest gift one can have. I knew I could put myself to good use as a member, but I didn't think I was ready. In the Personnel interviews I was pushed to overcome my fear.
"After Orientation I worked in the Cluny dining room, which I liked. I soon focalised it and discovered that it had an angel, the 'Dining Room Angel', a higher source I could learn to listen to. There was always time in the dining room to share with guests who needed personal attention and support. It was the way I made the basic connection with our guests.
"My friend and I split up. We had a vision of becoming holistic people, but in practice we supported each other's insecure behaviour patterns. Now I understand that we had fulfilled our contract with each other. Being alone was a drama. I didn't know what to do and I quickly got into a terrible, painful relationship. I prayed: 'God, if I'm supposed to be by myself let me know; if I'm supposed to be in a relationship, let me know with whom!' I dreamt of Eric and after two weeks he sent me a bouquet of flowers and asked to connect with me. We're still together.
"I did the accounts at Cluny for a while, which opened me up to what was going on in the wider community, and then moved into the Guest Department, learning how to work with guests — how to create an atmosphere of support and safety so people can open up to what is within them, just as I had with my sister when I was young. When you're working with a group, it requires skill and an ability to establish a strong connection with the higher being of the Findhorn Community and the higher selves of the members of the group. I felt myself become an instrument and co-creator — I often had to raise myself above my average level of being and become 'more than me'. Working with all the different group forces, you have to live in the here and now. In the beginning I tried to do with a new group what had worked with the last one, and fell flat on my face. You just have to keep the connection to higher beings and trust. I began to learn self-confidence, one of my greatest lessons in life. After two summers focalising the Guest Department I joined Education Branch.
"In 1984 Eric read a book about Sai Baba and tried to persuade me to read it. I didn't believe in gurus, but suddenly I was bombarded with Baba from every quarter. Five guests in an Experience week were devotees. I had dreams about Him. Then an Experience week co-f ocaliser was a devotee, so I decided to check it out with 'my own' God — who told me to surrender. Finally, I made a decision to go with Eric and a group from the community to visit Him. Now I'm convinced He is God on earth. He's helped me to become a better person, more loving, more caring, more confident. I'm happier, and have great hope for the future of humanity and the planet. He talks about three stages of spiritual development. 'I am in the Light' — that has been most of my life. 'The Light is in me' — that is the last three years. Now I'm working with the concept 'I am the Light'. I haven't fully grasped that. There's a difference between the mind 'knowing' something and every cell knowing it.
"The last period I've spent working as an administrator in Ed Branch. At first I designed the Guest Brochure, then I became Ed Branch co-focaliser. That's the most responsible job I've had. Before we had the new Core Group, I feel, a lot of the spirit and vision of the Foundation was held in Ed Branch. The focaliser had responsibility for the spiritual integrity of our educational work, creating the channel for the energy to move in. Now the Core Group does that. I also developed a beautiful friendship with my co-focaliser.
"When it seemed to us right to step out of the focalising role, no one came forward. It was a powerful lesson in trust. I had to be prepared to let whatever I'd done collapse if need be. It didn't collapse, but it changed. In retrospect I can see that changes are happening which couldn't have taken place if I'd stayed. The group has re-formed with a coordinator instead of focalisers. I've taken on responsibility for our Outreach programme. There's a great potential for our programmes to be carried out to other places. Most of them are relevant everywhere.